The Increasing Importance of Good Looks.

In a fascinating cross-generational study of mating preferences, every 10 years different groups of men and women were asked to rank 18 characteristics they might want enhanced in a mate. The importance of good looks rose “dramatically” for both men and women from 1939 to 1989, the period of the study, according to David M. Buss, an evolutionary psychologist at the University of Texas. On a scale of 1 to 3, the importance men gave to good looks rose from 1.50 to 2.11. But for women, the importance of good looks in men rose from 0.94 to 1.67. In other words, women in 1989 considered a man’s looks even more important than men considered women’s looks 50 years earlier. Since the 1930s, Buss writes, “physical appearance has gone up in importance for men and women about equally, corresponding with the rise in television, fashion magazines, advertising, and other media depictions of attractive models.”

In all likelihood this trend will continue, driven by social and technological changes that are unlikely to be reversed anytime soon—changes such as the new ubiquity of media images, the growing financial independence of women, and the worldwide weakening of the institution of marriage. For better or worse, we live now in an age of appearances. It looks like looks are here to stay.

I wouldn't be too surprised about this. 50% of people are of below average intelligence, after all.

Err... that's not true. Assuming by average one means the arithmetic mean. IQ scores maybe, I don't know how they scale those, but in general it's not true.

I think you're right. I would have expected 50% to be above average, not below.

I realize you're joking but you're still confusing the average (which is the mean) and the median. I have 4 people, 3 of them have 1 marble, the last has 10 marbles. The average number of marbles per person is 13/4 = 3.5 and yet 75% percent of the population has a below average number of marbles. This would of course be a minor point if it wasn't being used to try an mock the intelligence of other people, in which case I think the universe demands that such a mistake be pointed out clearly and publicly ;)

What do you think?

So either apostate82 was correct, or I was correct, or we were both correct.

What? I can't tell if you're still joking. The probability of the average of a population sample being the same as its median is virtually non-existent for any real world data. Thus you're both wrong... since you were both saying the same thing...

As for one or the other of us being right, if you can say that a millionaire has a dollar, then you can say that either 50% are below average or 50% are above average. In other words, when you say 50% are below average, you don't exclude the possibility that 51% are below average.

As for both of us being right, in spite of your virtual non-existent statement, it is actually quite likely. For the statement was not 50.00000%, it was 50% and so must be taken to mean somewhere between 45% and 55%. Since there are 7 billion people or so, there are a great many distributions that would keep the mean that close to the median. That would be the case even if you restricted the meaning to the range 49.5% to 50.5%.

Questionnaires are an incredibly weak method of ascertaining truth, people will answer that they think they should. These results are not indicative that looks are more important at all.

Oh, I don't know! If you marry someone you'll eventually both be old and ugly so I suppose you'd like a little more than good looks for a good marriage; then again, if you want fit kids, marry a stunner, wait till the kids grow up then divorce each other. Hm.

What do you think?

In the 1930's the wife relied on the mans income while the man relied on the womans ability to cook and clean. Today it is just personal attractiveness left, so of course good looks gets more important since it is a big part in how attractive someone is perceived to be.